I loved this book mostly because I loved Aaliyah and her voice so much. She's opinionated, funny, pragmatic and just wonderful. The book also provides a very different perspective on the Lebanese wars (both civil and with Israel) than anything I've encountered.


I hadn't heard of half the authors Aaliyah loves (and apparently read the wrong translations of the ones that I have read), but it really didn't matter to my enjoyment of the book. In some ways, it's the flip side for me of Jo Walton's Among Others, which I enjoyed mostly because I *did* know the books she mentioned and shared the experience of having loved discovering them. Even when I don't know the specific book, I know the experience of finding company in literature.